craig eric larson Lecturer Department of Mathematics University of Houston teaching my papers and notes conjectures of fajtlowicz's program graffiti frivolities
email: clarson@math.uh.edu

My office is 617 PGH.
You can leave a message for me with the Mathematics Department receptionist at 713-743-3500. The best way to get in touch with me is definitely by email.

As of December 2003, updates to the lists of Graffiti's conjectures, papers about Graffiti, and other links listed below, are now maintained and updated at the following page on Graffiti & Automated Conjecture-Making.

Graffiti is a program of Siemion Fajtlowicz, a mathematician at the University of Houston, that makes conjectures in various subfields of mathematics and in chemistry. In principle, it is domain-independent and not limited to these areas. See the paper "A Survey of Research in Automated Mathematical Conjecture-Making" below for a full description of the program.

In August, 2003, Fajtlowicz gave an address, "Toward Fully Automated Fragments of Graph Theory," at the 18th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP 2003), held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

• Here are MS Power Point slides based on this talk.
• Here is a (400 kb) picture (due to Yoshio Okamoto) of Fajtlowicz giving this address.
• Here is a link to more of Okamoto's conference pictures.

Fajtlowicz's paper, Toward Fully Automated Fragments of Graph Theory, which grew out of his talk at Graph Theory Day 2001 and appeared in Graph Theory Notes of New York.

• Red Burton is a new implementation of the computer program Graffiti to teach mathematics Texas style, i.e., by the process of self-discovery. This version and particularly its offshoot Little Red Riding Hood are suitable for using the program in an almost fully automated manner. In the case of the second version all that is missing is automated concept formation. I will discuss the significance of these issues in the context of mathematical aspects of the machine intelligence debate initiated in the books of Roger Penrose.
• Little Red Riding Hood High School Conjectures Demo

Ryan Pepper's paper "On New Didactics of Mathematics: Learning Graph Theory via Graffiti" (to appear in the DIMACS volume "Graphs and Discovery")

• postscript version.
• pdf version.

The list of Conjectures of Graffiti, "Written on the Wall"

• Download conjectures up to No. 840 (864 kb postscript file) wow-pre-840.ps
• Download conjectures starting from 840 on--the Fullerene Conjectures (380 kb postscript file) wow-post-840.ps
• Download both of the above, zipped together (322 kb) wow.zip

The conjectures of Minuteman on Fullerene Expanders

• Download 240 kb postscript file minuteman.ps

Two views of S. Fajtlowicz's Representation of C60

Fajtlowicz and Erdos

A cool picture of Siemion and Bozena Fajtlowicz, Poland, student days

• In the Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (ICA), Sept. 2007.
• 141 kb pdf version. larson-critical-independence-revised.pdf

My Opinion piece "Technology, Education, and the Single Salary Schedule"

• In the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, May, 2006.
• here's a link (pdf).

• In "Graphs and Discovery," the Proceedings of the DIMACS Workshop on Automated Discovery in Chemistry and Mathematics, v.69, 2005.
• 147 kb PDF version larson-graphs_and_discovery.pdf

My joint paper, with S. Fajtlowicz, "Graph-Theoretic Independence as a Predictor of Fullerene Stability"

• Published in Chemical Physics Letters, Vol 377/5-6 pp 485-490.
• PDF preprint of this paper.

A Note on Applying Graffiti's Ideas to Go Programming

My paper, "Philosophy and Mathematics"

• 272 kb PDF version: mathprac8edit.pdf
• 574 kb Postscript version: mathprac8edit.ps

• An edited version of this paper appeared in Graph Theory Notes of the New York Academy of Science, XLII (2002) 8--17.
• 167 kb PDF version: discovery19.pdf
• 302 kb Postscript version: discovery19.ps

• "Whirlpools and Vortices, Pigeon Breeding and Natural Selection"
• "Philosophy and Mathematics II"
• "The Flip Side of Now: A Note on Science, Philosophy, and History"

• Our wedding in Alaska.
• Jeanine and I went to Ireland in 2007. Here's slides (pps)
• "The Monkey's Paw", by W.W. Jacobs, a spooky story I remember from when I was a kid (and finally! found).
• 2006 University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award winner!
• My Dad's 50th High School Reunion, coming in Sept. 2006.
• Me & my Kitty.
• Jeanine's Dream Art.
• My little brother's cool famous "Picasso Abe" drawing.
• A picture of me playing Vice-President in my Congressional Page days
• A list of some favorite records.
• My super cute little friend Kelsea Brynn.
• Me and 3 close Friends in Hawaii, 2002. Where's donald?
• Boy wonderful -- a picture of me when i was 8.
• Some heretofore unavailable lyrics of Channel 3.
• Marta Lewicka , Polish PDE researcher, in Houston, 2001.
• Me and 2 Italian mathematicians at the 2001 European Summer School, St Petersburg, Russia.
• Bertrand Russell's Ten Commandments of teaching.
• Congressional Page Stuff.
• Patagonia at the Millenium: Penguins of the Magellanic Strait
• French Functional Analyst Arnaud Simard in Houston